Sodium aluminum tetraalkyls are useful compounds in the chemical industry. One particular use is their reaction with silane and halosilanes to produce alkylsilanes. For instance, see U.S. Pat. No. 4,670,574 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,711,965. Methods to produce sodium aluminum tetraalkyls can include the reaction of sodium aluminum hydride and olefins. Sodium aluminum hydride can require high pressures to produce, is expensive and can be i0 dangerous in handling, requiring expensive safeguards. Accordingly, methods of producing tetraalkylsilanes without the use of sodium aluminum tetraalkyls have been devised. For instance, in U.S. Pat. No. 4,595,777, trialkylaluminum and haloalkylsilanes are reacted to produce tetraalkylsilanes. In another instance, in U.S. Pat. No. 4,845,260 a three step method of reacting an alkali metal with aluminum, hydrogen and an olefin at elevated pressures in the presence of an organoaluminum catalyst (e.g. triethylaluminum) is first performed, followed by addition of more catalyst to the reaction mixture to form an intermediate mixture, which is then reacted with trihalosilane to produce a tetraalkylsilane.
Great Britain 763,824 discloses processes for the production of hydrocarbon substituted aluminum compounds in which a hydride of aluminum, or a derivative thereof in which one or more hydrogen atoms have been substituted by monovalent saturated hydrocarbon radicals, is heated with a hydrocarbon mono-olefin or poly-olefin at such a temperature that an addition product of the metallic starting compound and the olefin is formed and decomposition or other secondary changes of the starting materials and of the products do not take place to any substantial extent. An alternative presented in '824 is to first convert aluminum trialkyl into a complex alkali trialkyl aluminum hydride by addition of lithium hydride or sodium hydride with a subsequent reaction with an olefin to produce an alkali aluminum tetraalkyl.
Methods of producing sodium aluminum tetraalkyls without using sodium aluminum hydride remain of value.